After returning from our sight seeing the day before we headed to the local bar strip. It was quiet and a local bar tender began to entice us into his bare establishment. We negotiated lowering the price of beer and having control over the music (we got over Reggaeton very quickly) and we spent the night there until the city's 2am curfew.
The next morning Sutho and I were up early, packed and in a cab on the way to the airport. We'd be meeting Chivers the day after as he wanted to go paragliding. Sutho would accompany me to see my Colombian family again before we left Colombia.
Driving back through Medellin you realised how modern the city is and the beautiful place t is situated in, surrounded my mountains. At night, the city glows an orange colour and is a sea of houses and buildings.
We were exhausted and slept for the entire plane trip. When we arrived in our hostal (reccommended by another hostal in Cartagena) we were pleased to realise it was in a much better part of Bogota, and with plenty of other tourists. We got a hamburger and pizza from a local restraunt and had an early night.
Chizm and Chris soon arrived at the same hostal some time after midnight.
We walked down our main street and were met with scores of bicycles riding down the street with no cars in sight (this occurs on Sunday mornins between 8 and 2 as far as we could tell). While Chivers was buying another map of Colombia, a bird shat on him. It was so funny considering we'd only been outside a few minutes. We laughed and contined on.
Camera in hand I took a quck photo which we believe must have drawn the attention of local pickpockets.
Soon enough, I felt something wet hit my neck, and, convinced it was bird shit, I spun around to wipe it off and was greeted byt an elderly woman who apparantly had also felt the same thing, suddenly, similtanously, another eldery woman ran into the back of me.
It hit me (yes, I know, again).
My camera case was gone. Thankfully it was just the padded case, and nothe camera. Itwas the only ting in my back pocket. But they were gone just as quickly as it happened. It then dawned on me it wsant bird shit, and probably some spit. I was furious, but thankful everything else was in my money belt, or in my hand.
We headed back to the hotel after a quick trip to the end of the street (which is Bogota's principal building site - church, congress, president's house etc) where we met Fernando.
Out trip quickly become a 3 hour adventure around Bogota. Fernando was not only really informative but incredibly funny. We saw every part of Bogota including the CBD, sporting grounds, night clubs, restraunt strips, suburbs anda look outs over the city.
Also, thanks to Fernando - I now have a huge satin Colombian flag. He told the seller he was buying it for himself, and negotitated a price of only $20,000 pesos. Which is about $12. Normally, tourists can expect to pay between $50-$100.
Talking and listening to Fernando allowed me to really test how much Spanish I know. And to my surprise, it was a lot more than I first thought. It was fun translating as he spoke, and trading English and Spanish words between 6 men had us laughing.
The accent here is much more Spanish/European than in Mexico. The people are beautiful and friendly, like the old city (which we toured through it's brightly coloured walls as well), the mountains and the modern areas.
This will be dedicated to documenting my trip to my birthplace, Colombia. And also my thoughts and feelings about finding my birth parents. I hope that it'll give my friends and family an honest insight into how I really feel about all this, and also help anyone else who is an adopted child like myself.
Much more detail to come, but for now:
I was born on July 14, 1986 into an orphanage in Bogota, Colombia. At about 6 weeks, I was adopted by my Australian family and have lived in Sydney, Australia ever since.